OrbitControls Touch Issues on Safari iOS

This is a known issue with OrbitControls on Safari iOS, particularly related to pointer event handling during frame drops. The problem you're describing where touch interactions gradually become unresponsive is likely due to the "ghost touch" phenomenon you've identified, where pointer events aren't properly registered or cleared.

Potential Solutions

1. Consider using ArcballControls instead:
   ArcballControls offers better touch support and more advanced navigation functionality compared to OrbitControls. As mentioned in the documentation, it provides:

   • Full touch support
   • Intuitive camera movements via a virtual trackball
   • Support for pan, zoom, and pinch gestures
   • Focus functionality with double tap/click
   • Unlike OrbitControls, it doesn't require .update() to be called externally in an animation loop

2. Manual event cleanup:
   If you need to stick with OrbitControls, you could try implementing a manual cleanup function that resets the control's internal state when you detect issues:

   JAVASCRIPTCopied
   function resetControlState() {
     controls.enabled = false;
     // Short timeout to allow any pending events to clear
     setTimeout(() => {
       controls.enabled = true;
     }, 100);
   }

3. Event listener modifications:
   You might need to add additional event listeners to catch and handle cases where the pointerup events are missed:

   JAVASCRIPTCopied
   document.addEventListener('visibilitychange', () => {
     if (document.visibilityState === 'visible') {
       // Reset control state when tab becomes visible again
       resetControlState();
     }
   });

4. Performance optimization:
   Since the issue occurs after frame drops, improving overall performance might help:

   • Reduce scene complexity during interactions
   • Implement level-of-detail (LOD) rendering
   • Optimize your render loop

The difference in behavior between Safari iOS and Chrome on ChromeOS suggests this is likely a browser-specific issue with how Safari handles pointer events during performance hiccups.